Ajami

Ajami was one of the films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film last year, and as I put the DVD into my player I had the rare pleasure of not having any idea what the movie was about, eschewing reading the summary on the Netflix envelope. As a result, I enjoyed how the dense storyline unfolded, although I'm sure my lack of knowledge of the political situation in Israel hindered my full understanding of the events.

The film was co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Palestinian, and Yaron Shani, a Jewish Israeli, and is named after a neighborhood in the Israeli city of Jaffa. Although Arabic is the predominant language, there is also a lot of Hebrew spoken, but of course that is no apparent to my ears. Helpfully, the subtitles indicated what language was being spoken.

There are several intersecting plots, and the film uses chapters to shift focus from one character to another. The stories all have to do with a kind of criminal lifestyle. At the outset, a boy fixing his car is gunned down by men on a motorcycle, mistaken for someone else. A restaurant owner, being shaken down for protection money, shoots someone in a connected family. This ignites a vendetta (or whatever the Arabic word for that is), and a young man named Omar tries goes to his boss, a Christian restaurant owner, to try to broker peace. It is unknown to the Christian man that Omar has eyes for his daughter.

Meanwhile, another restaurant employee, Malek, is in the city illegally (here is where some of my ignorance hurts--I didn't understand where he was from and what restrictions there were on travel). His mother ends up in the hospital needing an expensive operation. Another storyline involves the restaurant's cook, who has taken up with a Jewish girlfriend. From the Jewish perspective, we follow the events around a Jewish policeman, who has a missing brother.

The script is nonlinear, and we see sometimes see events more than once, from different points of view and with more information. A second viewing would bring out even more appreciation. For example, I was unaware of that the restaurant owner and his daughter were Christian until near the end of the film, when he forbade her from seeing Omar because of the differences in their religion. Was this mentioned earlier in the film, and I just missed it, or was it deliberately withheld?

Most of the cast are Ajami locals and nonprofessionals, which helps give the film a documentary feel. I admired the film, but aside from a moment at the very end, when several strands are wrapped together in a powerful moment, I wasn't overly moved by it. It doesn't take a particular political stand, which is admirable, but then again because it doesn't it's hard to know what's at stake for the characters.

I've now seen four of the five nominated films from 2009, with only the Peruvian film, The Milk of Sorrow, remaining. I hope it will released on DVD soon.